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‘Tube atheists

Lots of people have been emailing me about this: YouTube is getting weird about censoring accounts by atheists. This one fellow, Nick Gisburne, with a long history on the service had his account abruptly deleted due to its “inappropriate nature”—he’d read some excerpts of violent passages from the Koran, with no commentary at all. It’s bizarre—it’s apparently not that he was espousing atheism, which YouTube does not seem to object to, but that he read quotes that put Islam in a bad light.

This is a remix of the ungodly CNN panel, with refutations and arguments imbedded in response to the harpies’ wicked denunciations. Good stuff!And remember, we’re guessing Dawkins and Hitchens will be on CNN tomorrow at 8ET. Unless Paris Hilton steps on a poodle or something.

I hadn’t seen the CNN footage yet…and now that I have I’m really sickened. No wonder they were scrambling to cover their asses and redo the segment with some atheist commentary. Can you imagine if they had a bit on discrimination against black people in the south complete with “Why do blacks inspire such hatred?” banner and a panel of all white people. I mean come on, the analogy isn’t that far off. The only other groups they could possibly get away with doing this to are probably the queer community and fat people. It’s funny what hate is considered okay in America.

As for the CNN ‘discussion’ segment, just be glad it wasnt on the Larry King show. If that was the case I’d full expect them to redo it with Madeline Murray O’Hair as the token atheist, channeled by Sylvia Brown, Rashomon style, just so they could get in her line about the ‘dirty christers’.

That’s the point you idiot: whether you believe or not makes no difference. Facts are facts. Come up with a study that proves otherwise.

I’m not otherwise bothered by him. He has a decent show on ESPN. Obviously though his will for discovery and mental rigor in this regard are lacking. I’m sure decades ago there was a white person who said the same thing about African Americans who felt they were being discriminated against. How ironic is that coming from two African Americans *AND* a Jew at the same time? Granted they are of a religion talking about people that have none, but to jump to the conclusion that atheism has invaded America is such nonsense…

The two women are just dense, period. The question isn’t even being considered; they’re just brushing it off the table. This is not a “debate” or show of real concern at all. It’s a demonstration, a cross-section if you will, of stupid and vapid human fears. It’s gut reactions honed by myopic self-interest in a facet of everyday life. Ms. Zahn seemed to barely have control over the discussion because the women kept butting in.

Bronze Dog: One of the best ways to avoid censorship is to host your website yourself. I’m using the WordPress software for my blog, but it’s hosted on my own machine. So the worst censorship that could happen is that someone takes away my Internet connection. Which isn’t a big deal; I can always just hook it up somewhere else.

He may have been banned for copyrights on the accompanying music, not for the verses. But hey, I’d like to see more of that Koran garbage made public. They seem to have a fetish for drinking boiling water. I’d also like to see the Talmud exposed more, especially the racist “anti-goyim” passages. Let’s show all religions for what they are, not just christianity.

Bronze Dog: One of the best ways to avoid censorship is to host your website yourself. I’m using the WordPress software for my blog, but it’s hosted on my own machine. So the worst censorship that could happen is that someone takes away my Internet connection. Which isn’t a big deal; I can always just hook it up somewhere else.

ahh, but censorship can take many forms.

the Kate and Janie blog was not removed, physically, rather it was simply censored from any corresponding wordpress reference.

IOW, somebody searching for the terms relating to the blog within wordpress sites would never find it.

very much like being delisted from google.

Of course, wordpress is a wholly owned company, and those who own it can change the rules any time they like (and evidently do). At the same time, arbitrary decisions that appear in violation of their own posted rules are certainly worthy of calling attention to.

Slightly OT. I am being attacked on my blog by a Creationist who keeps turning the page every time I link something to refute his previous garbage.
I could use new blood with a different approach (since I’m not a scientist) to rip him a new one.

His name is Mr. Beamish, and he started attacking me on Feb. 8th (scroll down the comments) stating there is no such thing as an Atheist. Now he is talking about time being faster at the beginning of the Big Bang, and his inference is that the earth is younger than we think because of it or something like that.

Nothing like pointing out what people say to get their supporters mad. It’s a lot of what I’ve done on the theory I’m best known (in a small circle) for critiquing, and as a result I get people like a recent (yesterday) commenter claiming it shows my “psychotic hatred” for the lead proponent.

AustinAtheist said…
“I’d like to do the same, but I’m not sure how. Any suggestions?”

Well, you could get the flv file from his website, or you could download one of the many youtube mirrors… but the thing is, it won’t work. Apparently they’re screening uploaded videos mine. I tried uploading mine, and it said the video was processing. The next thing I know it says “rejected” because of violation of terms or something. Not only are they deleting videos that have already been posted, they’re SCREENING them now! that is outrageous. Now we won’t even know what they’re censoring!

“Can you imagine if they had a bit on discrimination against black people in the south complete with “Why do blacks inspire such hatred?” banner and a panel of all white people.”

I sent CNN an email making exactly that comparison.. I even used the word ‘uppity’, which is pretty much what this panel was calling atheists.
The girl in the basketball game footage is Nicole Smalkowski, whose (along with her father’s) problems with the school & town were mentioned here and on other pages.

Damn! I’ll try anyway. The link to the offending video above no longer works, but I found this one, and posted everything at my blog here. Let’s see how long it lasts. I’m going to at least save them all to my favorites on my account.

Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules
By CORNELIA DEAN
[snip]But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”

He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent. “People hold all sorts of opinions different from the department in which they graduate,” he said. “What’s that to anybody else?”

Ya know, I’ll bet Dr. Boothroyd had quite a bit more to say about it, but of course, the “journalist” chose to use the one quote from him that would appear to paint the rational ones as “bananas” rather than the YEC paleo.

By the man’s own admission, he said and did whatever was necessary to acquire what he wanted from the graduate program, even if he had to say things that utterly contradicted the things he supposedly believes to be true.

In that case, how can any person consider his witness to be faithful? If he speaks about his supposed faith, what would cause us to grant him the benefit of the doubt when we know that he’ll lie to get what he wants?

Letting him go through the program and perjur himself is the best possible response.

If you watch the entirity of the CNN clip, Stephen A. comes off a lot less ignorant than the one comment highlighted in this clip. Yeah, he says his share of stupid things, but he is technically on the atheists’ side, and does a passable job arguing with those harpies.

Dr. Fastovsky and other members of the Rhode Island faculty said they knew about these disagreements, but admitted him anyway. Dr. Boothroyd, who was among those who considered the application, said they judged Dr. Ross on his academic record, his test scores and his master’s thesis, “and we said, ‘O.K., we can do this.’ ”

He added, “We did not know nearly as much about creationism and young earth and intelligent design as we do now.”

sounds remarkably like what happened with Jonathan Wells at Berkeley.

Of course, the guys in MCB were far more ignorant of what the implications of Wells’ background were than those in Zoology. Even still, there was enough ignorance (I take the 5th) of creobots in the Zoo dept. to go around.

I thought it was pretty ironic that the two women were bashing atheists and he says that. I have to wonder if Stephen Smith could come up with a single example of some ethnic, religious, or sexual orientation group that could be bashed like that on the news with no protest from anyone on the panel. Wasn’t it George Bush Sr who said in 1987: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” Could any major politician make that statement about some other group without inciting a major protest? Could you imagine if he said, “No, I don’t know that [Blacks or Jews] should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.”

Now he is talking about time being faster at the beginning of the Big Bang, and his inference is that the earth is younger than we think because of it or something like that.

I heard that one of those creationist organizations switched to the view that the universe was created 6,000 years ago, but everything was moving really fast, causing some sort of relativistic time effect – all to explain away the fact that the universe actually looks old.

I successfully uploaded the offending video, which was “processed,” as they like to call it, and will not appear because evidently I have violated their terms of use. Excuse me while I keep a close watch on my account.

Could any major politician make that statement about some other group without inciting a major protest? Could you imagine if he said, “No, I don’t know that [Blacks or Jews] should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.”

Oh come on, the claim about atheists being the most hated group, blah, blah, does sound shocking and implausible on its face. I assume it’s true, but you can hardly blame Smith for being sceptical when confronted with it. In fact, that kind of scepticism about wild-sounding claims is actually a good thing. I don’t see how it makes him stupid.

OTOH, “stupid” is far too weak a word for the egregious … well, actually, stupidity … of the other two. As someone said, they should have given Smith (and the viewers) reason to think later on that there is some evidence corroborating that seemingly wild claim about the hatred for atheists.

The latter video wrongly attributed the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli’s language about the U.S. not being a Christian nation to Thomas Jefferson. The language was written by Joel Barlow, ratified by the Senate, and signed by John Adams.

I watched part of Nick Ginsburne’s Koran video, which uses copyrighted music in the background (“Clubbed to Death” by Rob D., from The Matrix soundtrack).

On February 5, Viacom asked YouTube to delete 100,000 videos that infringed on its copyrights, and declined to enter into a licensing agreement with YouTube as Universal, CBS, NBC, and Warner have done.

I believe the music track in question belongs to Warner, but they may have just licensed it for The Matrix. If it belongs to Viacom, then I’d suspect that’s a likely cause of the removal here.

Trinifar: YouTube likes the gloat that it’s users create the content. So in essence people “pay” with content as oppose to dollars, so it’s not exactly “free” considering everyone puts in a share of it’s profits. I think this is what makes Google genius, why invest in making content when you can have someone else do it for you?

Stephen A, didn’t seem like he wanted to step on the toes of the atheist to much.. he just got caught in the crosshairs of the other panelist and his own faith. I’m a number 6 atheist and I was skeptical of those stats as well, I’m more inclined to go with “Just as much” as oppose to “more so”

I can’t add much more to the comments above. I’m a user of Blogger, also owned by Google, and though my blog is not about atheism, I’m writing a denunciation of this there, and urging my readers to link ‘YouTube censorship‘ to the place where I read the news. I’d like to see Google returning matches about this in the first page of search results.

they may have just licensed it for The Matrix. If it belongs to Viacom, then I’d suspect that’s a likely cause of the removal here.

My understanding is that when Youtube removes a video for copyright infringement it clearly says that and when you try to play such a video after it is yanked, the page tells you it was removed due to copyright violation.

That’s not what happened here. Instead, it appears there were numerous viewers who tagged the video as “offensive” for inappropriate content and that’s what the Youtube email says. It’s also what the page said when I tried to play the banned video.

As to licensing of music, a license normally only grants the licensee a right to use the music for a specified purpose. The licensee does not get any additional rights to the copyright in the music. Radio stations, for instance, obtain permission to broadcast music but they have no further rights regarding the music.

I know what I’m going to do is one- try to upload the video. That just annoys the youtube people. And two- I’m also going to go to all the videos in favor of christians and muslims and religion I can find, and flag them as inappropriate. If nick’s was inappropriate for whatever reason, then I’m sure at least some of the videos I flag will be inappropriate too :P

“As to licensing of music, a license normally only grants the licensee a right to use the music for a specified purpose. The licensee does not get any additional rights to the copyright in the music. Radio stations, for instance, obtain permission to broadcast music but they have no further rights regarding the music.”

That’s why I said “if it belongs to Viacom.” If Warner owns it, then there’s clearly no copyright issue, because Warner has given YouTube a license for its users to use Warner music. The mere presence of this song on a Warner-labeled soundtrack doesn’t mean Warner owns it, however.

Those who have pointed out that YouTube’s behavior is different for copyright infringement issues have strengthened the case that this possibility is a red herring…

This article has been cited on the CT Blue blog, under the category “Creeping Totalitarianism”. It seems the YouTube censorship google bomb we launched in support of Nick is working; the link was number 4 in the 1st page of results from Google… Let’s bring YouTube censorship down!